Читать книгу All About Me: Loving a narcissist - Simon Crompton - Страница 9

Sam who? Sam Vaknin is one of the most influential voices in modern perceptions of narcissism. This is partly because of his book, Malignant Self Love – Narcissism Revisited. But mainly it is because of his amazingly intense presence on the internet – in discussion forums, information pages, agony columns. He is not a psychoanalyst or a psychologist or a psychotherapist. In fact he’s a philosopher. But he’s also a self-confessed narcissist, and has become a self-appointed spokesman on narcissism issues for America – and, via the internet, the world.

Vaknin doesn’t go easy on narcissistic personalities. He regularly comments on their ‘toxicity’ or ‘malignancy’. A typical comment on narcissists is: ‘The glamour and trickery wear thin and underneath them a monster lurks which irreversibly and adversely influences the lives of those around it for the worse.’

Vaknin has his detractors. Some people have criticised him for recreating narcissism in his own image – appropriately enough.¹⁰ Others believe he satisfies his own narcissistic needs by creating himself as a guru to whom women (mainly) in distress turn to for advice. But his considerable industry on the subject has had a major effect on making narcissism an issue to be taken seriously by the general public – and not just by psychoanalysts and mental-health professionals.

Vaknin has also come up with some additions to theories on narcissism and how it manifests itself. Perhaps most intriguing is the distinction he draws between somatic narcissists and cerebral narcissists. This helps link our popular notions of narcissists as mirror-hugging dandies with the more worrying implications of how badly narcissists tend to treat other people.

Vaknin says there are two types of narcissist. First, there are those obsessed with their looks, bodies and pulling power. They flaunt everything they have that contributes to their outward magnificence – their possessions, their muscles, their tan, their tattoos, their sexual prowess and exploits. You’ve seen a lot of them around. They recount their feats of sexual or athletic achievement, but collapse into a gibbering heap when they get the first sniffle of a cold. We’re talking about male characteristics really … but more so. These are somatic narcissists – narcissists who are obsessed with the body.

In contrast, there are the cerebral narcissists – people who build up their sense of magnificence out of an innate feeling of intellectual superiority to everyone else. Cerebral narcissists are arrogant know-alls, who use their knowledge and wit (whether real or imagined) to secure adoration and admiration, in just the same way as somatic narcissists use their looks and physical achievements.

Now this is interesting stuff, because it tunes in with people we all know. Vaknin says it is common for real narcissists to conform to one type – in other words, narcissists tend to be either somatic or cerebral, but somatic narcissists will have times when their behaviour conforms more to the cerebral type, and vice versa. He bases this largely on his own experience. Here’s what he says about his own behaviour patterns:

I am a cerebral narcissist. I brandish my brainpower, exhibit my intellectual achievements, bask in the attention given to my mind and its products. I hate my body and neglect it. It is a nuisance, a burden, a derided appendix, an inconvenience, a punishment. Needless to add that I rarely have sex (often years apart) … Invariably, following every life crisis, the somatic narcissist in me took over. I became a lascivious lecher. When this happened, I had a few relationships – replete with abundant and addictive sex – going simultaneously … This outburst of unrestrained, primordial lust waned in a few months and I settled back into my cerebral ways. No sex, no women, no body.

Whether you go with everything Vaknin says or not, there’s no doubt he’s one of the most outspoken, industrious, fascinating narcissists around.